Taiwan will continue to be a trusted chip partner globally and help strengthen the supply chain, Economy Minister Wang Mei-hua told a senior European Union official at rare high-level talks on Thursday.
Although, the EU has been courting Taiwan to build plants in alliance, whereas Taiwan is constantly facing pressure from China which claims the Island as its own.
The European Chips Act:
In February, the EU revealed a European Chips Act, mentioning the bloc to Taiwan, which is the home to world’s largest chip maker TSMC and other major companies, as one of the “like-minded partners” Europe would like to work with.
Likewise, Wang’s ministry stated that the talks with Sabine Weyand, director-general for trade at the European Commission are focused on areas including semiconductor corporations.
Additionally, Wang underlined that, ‘Taiwan will continue to be a trusted partner of the global semiconductor industry and help stabilize supply chain resilience,’ says the ministry.
The statement added that Taiwan has tried their best to help the EU and other partners to solve the global shortage of chips.
Later, the ministry noted that the last Taiwan – EU meetings were at deputy level.
‘This shows that in the EU’s blueprint for international economic and trade cooperation, the importance of Taiwan has increased, and this is a major breakthrough in Taiwan-EU relations,’ it said.
The EU meeting comes a day after the United States agreed to launch new trade talks with Taiwan.
However, a global chip shortage and supply chain have created desolation for many companies over the past few years.
Additionally, TSMC mentioned that the company is spending $12 billion on chip factories in the United States.
In one crease for EU aspirations, Taiwan’s GlobalWafers Co Ltd failed in February in a 4.35 billion euro ($4.64 billion) takeover attempt of German chip supplier Siltronic.
Neither EU nor any one of its members have formal consular relations with Chinese claimed Taiwan, but the bloc has been supportive for the island.
Additionally, Taiwan is also pushing for dual investment agreement with the EU.
